Breast Enlargement With Uplift

Breast Uplift Surgery combined with Breast Enlargement Surgery

22nd February 2011

Breast Enlargement With Uplift

Brief introduction on having Breast Uplift Surgical procedure (Mastopexy) combined with Breast Enlargement or Augmentation Surgery. For more information or should you wish to book a FREE Consultation with our specialist plastic surgeon, please call us on 01844 214362.

Transcript

Breast Uplift Surgery Combined With Breast Enlargement Surgery

My name is Adrian Richards, and today I’m going to be talking about a mastopexy augmentation procedure. So a mastopexy is known as a breast uplift and basically tightens the skin of the breast. An augmentation, or enlargement, increases the volume of the breast. So an augmentation is basically used to increase the size of the breast when the nipple has not descended. So in someone who hasn’t had children or who has had children but the nipple isn’t too far descended, an augmentation alone will sometimes do. For someone who’s got sufficient breast volume and just wants a slightly perter breast, an uplift will do.

If you’ve got the dual combination of insufficient volume plus a nipple in a very low position . . . the way you test this, if you’re look at yourself in the mirror, if there’s no skin underneath the brown bit, the areola of the nipple when you’re looking straight on, you may well need an uplift, because there should be normal skin underneath the nipple. So if you haven’t got sufficient volume for an uplift mastopexy alone or if you’ve got a significant amount of droop without the volume, the best option for you is a mastopexy augmentation. In mastopexy augmentation, the volume is corrected with an implant, and the lower nipple position, or droop, is corrected with an uplift.

So, this operation incorporates elements of both the augmentation and the uplift. So I’m going to talk about the augmentation first. You need, as in normal breast augmentation, to think very carefully about the size, shape, and volume of the implant you’re going to be using. And again, what we tend to do is spend a lot of time with you in different clothing, looking at implants and our special bras to see what volume suits your frame the best. You need to think very carefully about the size of the implant.

Next thing to do is to think very carefully again about the type of incision. With a breast augmentation, a normal incision is five centimetres in the fold underneath the breast. With a mastopexy augmentation, the incisions have to be longer. They can, like a mastopexy, be just a semicircular incision on the upper part of the areola. It can go right the way around the areola. It can have a lollipop incision, or a short transverse scar, which is the lollipop with a transverse scar, or a lollipop with a full transverse scar.

But normally, because we’re adding volume, we’re tightening up the breast skin by adding volume, the amount of scars you need are generally shorter in a mastopexy augmentation than in a mastopexy alone, in which there’s no added volume to the breast. So again, mastopexy augmentation is slightly more complicated than either augmentation alone or a mastopexy alone, because the surgeon’s got to juggle changes in volume and changes in the tissue tightness.

Now, there is a debate in plastic surgery whether the mastopexy augment should be done at the same time, or some surgeons would favour doing one at a time, doing the mastopexy uplift, getting the dimensions of the breast right and then doing an augmentation. Some surgeons prefer to do the augmentation followed by a mastopexy. Most of my patients, I think because of time concerns, prefer the combined approach, having a mastopexy augmentation at the same time, which has the advantage of one operation, but probably is technically slightly more difficult to get absolutely right.

So again, I would suggest it might be worth listening to a podcast we’ve done talking to patients who have had these procedures. Also have a look at the video we have previously done on augmentation and the video I’ve done on mastopexy, because mastopexy augmentation combines both of these. But the important things to think about in this form of surgery are volume of implant, shape of implant, location of implant, and frontal or behind the muscle, and these are all discussed in the breast augmentation videos. And with a mastopexy, type of mastopexy, type of scarring, and extent of scarring, which again I discussed in the podcasts and also in the mastopexy video. So, thank you very much.